Monthly Archives: August 2015

We’ve recently launched our new InfluencerCommunities subscription service. Here’s why. There’s a massive disconnect between the importance of an industry sector’s most important influencer communities, both online & offline, and the attention paid to them by vendors’ marketing depts.

According to InformationWeek, special interest communities featured in the top five most likely sources of vendor information for prospective purchasers (both at initial problem scoping and at vendor choice stages).

And while over three-quarters of B2B industry marketing heads rate their industry sector’s main forums & communities (both online and offline) as very important in influencing their prospects, less than one-third are confident their company has ongoing, proactive relationships with those top communities.

So companies really need to know which online & offline communities are the most influential in their sector. Which they should monitor, which to ignore and which maybe to join. Where are their industry’s most important conversations going on and who’s instigating them?

And it’s not just about which communities have the most members. Are their members those people moving & shaking the sector or are they just … followers? Which of their sector’s top influencers are members? And what should they do to engage with those people once they’ve identified the most important ones?

Our new Influencer Communities subscription service answers all of the above and more. We expect it to become one of our most popular services.

Just finished reading the 2013 book ‘Hatching Twitter’ by Nick Bilton of the The New York Times. It reads like a novel but is actually an account of the first five years of Twitter – from its earliest days inside the podcasting startup Odeo to the 2011 arrival of Dick Costolo as CEO.

I thought I’d followed the inside story of Twitter closely enough at the time it was happening, but I had no idea what really went on inside the company. I assumed the founders had amicably left to pursue other startups. I thought there were three founders not four. And I thought they were largely left alone to develop Twitter as they wanted. I was wrong on all counts. Assume that every time we read of the top roles being voluntarily reshuffled there was treachery and a bloody coup behind each move. Fascinating to read what really went on. Highly recommended.